Subtexts presents resisters with Mojisola Adebayo & Bayan Shbib

“The toilet is occupied”. Iman, a young queer Palestinian woman artist decides if the occupation is coming for her the best thing to do is occupy the only space she has left: the toilet. We’ve seen her try everything to get across the checkpoint: dancing, clowning, blowing huge bubbles, singing, painting, impersonations, scaling the separation wall and even releasing her cat across the line.  Now she’s staying put but her closest yet most distant friend, Umi, a Black British South African activist and musician, over from the UK, is determined to get her out. The struggle of wills becomes a battle for love and at the heart of it: a tender secret." 

About resisters is a new play written by Mojisola Adebayo about queer and women's resistance to occupation, war and genocide through art. Shaped by theatre work in Palestine and research into Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, two Jewish lesbian lovers, visual artists and stepsisters who lead an underground resistance to the Nazis on the Island of Jersey during WW2 - come get a sneak preview of the work in progress and offer reflections, feedback or just take it in.

Bayan Shbib is a Palestinian-Syrian theatre maker, actress, playwright, director, literary translator, and PhD researcher whose work bridges performance, psychology, and political struggle. Since 2006, Bayan has been a core artist and drama trainer with Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah, creating and directing socially engaged performances across Palestine, Europe, and the Middle East. Her major works include Who Will Survive 2077 (Ashtar Theatre/Fred Ensemble Düsseldorf, 2022), Ventolin of Return (2022), The Gaza Monologues (2014), and Safad-Shatilla Vice Versa, for which she received the Best Actress Award at the Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival (2006)

Bayan is currently a doctoral researcher in Social Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, specializing in the intersections of theatre, trauma, and decolonial imagination. 

Mojisola Adebayo is professor of Theatre Writing and Performance Practice at QMUL, a Black British performer, playwright, director, producer, workshop leader and teacher of Nigerian (Yoruba) and Danish heritage.Mojisola trained in Theatre of the Oppressed and Physical Theatre and has worked internationally in theatre, television and radio for over twenty-five years, from Antarctica to Palestine to  Zimbabwe.  She has acted in over 50 theatre, television and radio productions, devised and directed over 30 scripts for stage and video and has lead countless workshops and training courses.Her co-edited book Black British Queer Plays and Practitioners: An Anthology of Afriquia Theatre came out in 2022 and her STARS premiered at ICA in 2023 and returned to Brixton House this year.